Heads Will Roll
by TheKoganKid
Summary: It's Halloween time in Whitechapel, and this year someone's stirring up the town by bringing everyone's greatest fears to life. Ethan, Benny, and the vampire trio are on a mission to stop them before things stop being harmless fun and become deadly. The only bad part? They have to catch and stop the culprit at Sarah's Halloween party, all decked out in costumes. Bethan!
1. They're Creepy and They're Kooky

_**Side Note : Hewwo there :3 First of all, I'm sorry about All That Glitters, but I'm slowly but surely working on it- it will get there eventually, I promise! Second, here's my little Halloween gift to the fandom because scary holiday + the gang + Bethan is a must. Halloween basically defines the whole damn show. I'll be updating every week until Halloween, when the final chapter will be posted! Enjoy! **_

_**xXxXxXx**_

"Chastise."

"To discipline, or criticize severely."

"Ten points for Gryffindor," Benny cheered, giving Ethan a wicked grin.

Their English class was in the middle of reviewing vocabulary in pairs, flash cards held up between the partners and many just giggling about it and pretending to review. Ethan was kind of junky at vocab, though, so Benny let him study without sidetracking him.

Ethan grinned back, and waited patiently for the next one.

"Tirade."

"A long, angry speech."

"I think you studied on the side, you goob."

Ethan just rolled his eyes at his best friend and took the pile, having completed to entire deck.

"So," Benny began as he shuffled the cards back into their bag. "Halloween."

Ethan looked up at him from under the shag of his bangs, eyebrow quirked upwards. "What of it, Ben?"

"We have to do something cool this year! No just sitting around and gorging on candy while watching _Halloween_, or_ Nightmare On Elm Street_! We gotta go do something!"

That sounded an awful lot like a suggestion to party, and paling, the Morgan boy shook his head.

"Benny, I'm not going to a Halloween party." he stated bluntly.

Benny all but melted onto the desktop in a pile of melodrama, and widening his face up, he gave Ethan his best puppy dog face.

"But E," he whined. "Everyone'll be there!"

Ethan sighed. "I'm sure that's a slight exaggeration."

"It's not, not even a little." Benny pressed on. "Would I change your mind if I said it was at Sarah's house? On Halloween night from eight until midnight?"

Snorting, the smaller of the two smiled at Benny widely in regards to his persuasion attempts. "It's not like I like Sarah anymore."

"Or girls at all, for that matter." Benny threw out as Ethan moved to place their cards on the teacher's desk. A couple of people looked up from their groups, Rory included, and instead of blushing all Benny did was lean back cooly and grin. The stretch of his lips practically screamed 'That's right, I'm dating Ethan fucking Morgan, what're you bitches going to do about it?' like a white girl at the club, and it made a few people turn away in distaste. But Rory laughed at his friend in an all too knowing way- he'd walked in on Benny and Ethan in compromising positions more than once.

"Benny, it could be at Flash Gordon's house and I could still care less." Ethan told him honestly as he sat back down. "I'm sorry, but parties give me the hives."

"Are you sure it's not just because you have to interact with other people?" Rory asked him from across the asile, and he ducked easily as Ethan's eraser flew towards his head.

"No one has to know it's you, E." Benny pointed out. "Halloween is for costumes, and costumes equal masks, remember?"

Sighing, Ethan looked back at Benny from the small distance in between them; he wanted to protest like a child who couldn't get a toy at Walmart, rant and shout about how much he despised parties of any kind, but Benny's eyes were glowing with so much hardly contained hope and excitement that he just couldn't break his boyfriend's heart.

"Fine," Ethan drew out dramatically. "But we're not staying there the whole time, okay? I still want that scary movie and endless amounts of snacks ordeal with you."

Benny whooped quietly so not to disturb the rest of the class, and not even bothering to make sure the coast was clear, he leaned forwards and pecked Ethan on the mouth.

"You're the best, E."

Ethan practically melted into his hoodie in an effort to conceal his blush and dopey smile.

_**xXxXxXx**_

Sarah and Erica gave each other pointed looks over their food- any more of this and they were seriously going to consider downing a glass of holy water just to end the pain.

Benny, Rory, and surprisingly, Ethan, were discussing what they should go to Sarah's party as. Or who, really.

So many of the costume ideas were geek-related that the two girls felt as though they were trapped in a never ending Comic Con discussion panel.

"I got it!" Rory shouted. "We'll go as the three hobbits- Ethan as Frodo, Benny as Sam and me as Pippin."

Benny spluttered around his water. "Rory, how the hell is that better than my suggestion? _Harry Potter _characters would be so much cooler- me as Harry, Ethan as Neville and you Seamus."

"Benny, you only want to go as _Harry Potter _characters because you're a warlock, you jackass."

Erica's eye twitched.

"Anything you want to add, Ethan?" Sarah asked, her voice and fangs alike dripping with sarcasm and irritation. "Another comment to get the pot stirring?"

"I have nothing to say on the matter anymore," Ethan told her seriously. "I'm basically going to your party against my will. No offence."

Erica's lip curled back in a grin and a sneer all in one. "That's because you can't say no to your boyfriend."

"Yes I can."

Just as Ethan said this, Benny reached for Ethan's cookies and upon asking for some, Ethan said yes almost as once and received pointed looks from the three vampires at their lunch table.

So maybe he was a little soft when it came to Benny. Could anyone blame him?

_**xXxXxXxXx **_

Even though they had been there for nearly two weeks now, Ethan was still highly unimpressed by the amount of plastic and cardboard and stick-on-everything-and-all-things Halloween decorations littered all over his History class. There were smiling ghosts with large, bottomless eyes; silhouettes of witches riding around on broomsticks with straw-like hair and warts blossoming on their noses; werewolves howling at the moon; and his personal favorite, a cardboard cut out of Dracula in the corner, hovering over a fainting woman, the image completely black and white except for the blood welling up under the vampire's fangs.

Ethan's teacher, Mrs. Mayer, had always been known for her enthusiasm, but this was borderline _Hoarders_.

Flicking a ribbon that had fallen off the stem of a felt pumpkin hanging on the wall, Ethan sat down heavily at his desk and rifled through his backpack to grab his notebook and a pencil. His desk partner, a girl in Junior year with him named Jessica, sat down too and began shuffling around much in the same manner as Ethan was.

Suddenly, she squealed loudly and shot up from her seat, drawing everyone in the classroom's attention.

"There's a spider on my bag!" she shouted hysterically. "A real one!"

Looking over at her backpack, Ethan saw a black spider the size of a quarter creeping over the strap covered in polka dots. But midway through its crawl, as Mrs. Mayer came over to check it out, the spider stilled, and became inanimate right before Ethan's eyes. He blinked in disbelief.

Mrs. Mayer plucked the now plastic spider off of Jessica's bag, and looking at it to make sure it was fake, she chuckled.

"I think it just fell off of the cotton web on the ceiling." Mrs. Mayer told Jessica gently. "Nothing to worry about- just a trick of the lighting."

Ethan looked up to Jessica's crumpled face and watched as she blinked, as well, confusion welling up in her eyes.

"B-but- I was real! I know it was! I saw it moving and crawling over my bag!"

Mrs. Mayer simply patted her back and moved over to her fake web, stepping up onto a chair to place the spider back in its proper place.

The incident was forgotten almost at once by everyone but Ethan, and Jessica, who shared a look of skepticism.

"You saw it moving too, right?" Jessica asked him in a pained whisper.

Ethan looked over his shoulder at the web, and he studied the spider for a moment. It remained perfectly still, as a plastic, fake, completely not real spider from the decoration department should.

"I'm not sure."

_**xXxXxXx **_

_**A/N: I love this story already even though this first chapter was kind of lame-o xD It was my first day of school so I'm tired but I thought this would be a nice way to unwind. Hope you liked it!**_


	2. We're Living In This Ghost Town

_**Side Note : Oooh :3 I love you guys! I got much better reactions to that shitty first chapter than I thought I would! So I guess I better continue because srsly I have so much to do this week that I think I'm going to spontaneously combust before Thursday even rolls around. So I hope this chapter goes as well as the first! **_

_**Also : I think I'll put down some costume ideas for these two and maybe the others, but they won't actually be the boys' costumes :) So let's start with a new one! Ethan as Luke and Benny as Anakin from Star Wars :D I'm a huge Trekkie and have never really watched Star Wars but Christ those two would rock the Skywalkers. **_

_**Onwards! **_

_**xXxXxXx**_

Two hours later, even after trudging his way through Physics and German 2C and walking home, exhausted, Ethan was _still _mulling over the spider incident in his head.

He lived in Whitechapel, for crying out loud- nothing should be hard to believe anymore after all of things he and Benny had seen in the past two years. They'd fought vampires, battled off zombies, hacked an angry tree to death, went through a parallel universe, and had even been turned or close to turned into a lot of the supernatural creatures they'd stumbled across. He was given visions of the future when touching certain things or people, and his best friend was a warlock who could do a hell of a lot of things now with his magic. And also, his other three best friends were vampires who could kick ass and still manage to fly under everyone else's radars in the closely knit town, for reasons still unbeknownst to him.

But concidering all of those things, still, Ethan was still puzzled by what he had seen in World History that afternoon. He was, 99.99% sure the spider had been alive, and creeping along Jessica's backpack, but as soon as he blinked it stopped moving. He'd believed it was real, and had felt incredibly foolish upon finding out that the spider was simply plastic and the light was playing against his eyes.

Maybe it was a Halloween prank, Ethan decided, since the holiday was coming up in a few weeks.

Pulling out his German and English homework, Ethan sat down at his desk, totally prepared to work on it and concentrate. But every time he strayed even slightly from a problem, the spider would pop up into his thoughts, and his magically induced mind would think on the whole scene all over again. More than once, he could practically feel the spider crawling up his leg, or over the back of his neck, and by the time he'd managed to move onto the fifth question of his German homework, he was all wired up and paranoid as hell.

An hour passed uneventfully with Ethan make believing spiders skittering across his pale skin, and taking in Jessica's tormented face, while simultaneously trying to complete his homework with enough effort to say he tried and failed fairly.

A loud shout was what finally dragged him away from the world of _The Great Gatsby_. Ethan looked up from the pages of the paperback with wide eyes, and looking automatically to his window, he waited with baited breath to see if the noise would occur again.

It did. Someone just a few houses up from Ethan started screaming wildly and getting up from his desk chair, Ethan crept over to his window to look out onto the street below.

One of his neighbors, Mr. Turner, was stumbling down his stairs, and even from the large distance in between him and Ethan, the high schooler could tell that his face was a sickly white color. There was also something trailing after him, and Ethan was about to turn and call out to his mother when his eye caught the pursuer, and he stopped right where he was.

It was a ghost. Not the stupid sheeted kind, from _Scooby Doo _or any other children cartoon, but a real ghost whose feet didn't touch the ground and looked vaguely like a person. He looked to be someone who'd been killed in the civil war, wearing a soldier's coat and slacks with a cap on his head. Though half of his opaque face was missing, and instead replaced by the skull that lay underneath the protective layer.

Mr. Turner shrieked again and took off across his lawn, the phantom gliding after him in his wake. Ethan watched with an open mouth as Mr. Turner tripped across his own lawn, Benny's lawn, and then Ethan's, and continued to watch until his neighbor disappeared around the corner with his howls still ringin out to the night.

For a moment, Ethan didn't move from his spot. He continued to look out of his window into the twilight, though there was nothing more to see than a few wayward leaves rustling in the wind. His head was swimming with a whirlwind of questions and confusion, but the main inquire tumbling through his head stood out like a neon sign.

_What the hell was going on in this town? _

And that made Ethan snort, because really, when _wasn't _there something going on in Whitechapel.

"What're you laughing at?"

Turning away from the window at last, Ethan caught sight of Benny lingering in his doorway, leaning easily against the wood paneling and smiling at him. His confusion, though still there at the back of his mind, died away at once at the sight of his favorite person in the entire universe standing in front of him with his backpack in one hand and his other tucked into the pocket of his jeans.

Ethan grinned at him. "Nothing. Something just freaked Turner out and he went flying across our lawns."

Snorting, Benny tossed his bag down onto the floor and walked over to where Ethan was still positioned by the window. He pulled back the curtain to peer outside in much the same way Ethan just had.

"What was he yelling about this time?"

The shorter of the two hesitated for a moment, before responding. "I think he thought there was a ghost chasing him. It looked like a ghost from up here, but I'm not too sure. I thought I saw a spider on Jessica's bag today in History and it turned out to be plastic so I'm sure it's just October getting to me."

Benny didn't look as convinced as Ethan sounded. "Are you sure, E? Usually when we doubt what we see it's what's tormenting the town next."

Ethan looked back out of the window; the night was still, and Turner's shouting was silenced by the dark of the shadows creeping in. Whatever had happened, Ethan was still sure that there wasn't a ghost haunting his neighbor.

"Yeah, I'm sure." he smiled up at Benny, who smiled back and let the curtain drop from his hands.

"Well, in that case-"

And then he kissed Ethan, slowly, sweetly, and comforting enough that Ethan forgot all about the tricking of his eyes and brain at once. His thoughts were consumed solely of Benny, his best friend, his boyfriend, his _entire fucking world_, and spiders seemed absolutely trivial compared to the taste and warmth of him.

In the distance, Ethan heard a door opening, but he ignored it in favor of wrapping his arms around Benny like a human octopus, and he felt Benny laughing against his lips.

"Ugh- _Mom! Dad!" _Jane shouted, and Ethan finally realized it was _his _door that had been opened. "Ethan and Benny are kissing again!"

"I don't see what the big issue is, Jane." Samantha shouted back.

"It's _gross_, Mom. Have you ever seen Uncle Derek kissing a girl? It's disgusting!"

Needless to say, the two teenage boys were amused by Jane and her childish naivety.

"It is gross, though," Ethan amended in between kisses. "Derek's a damn jaguar when picking up girls."

"Mental images, dude."

_**xXxXxXx **_

_**A/N: ... **_

_**I can't write second chapters. Like, at all. Not even a little. They always fail horribly. I hope it was decent enough for you to keep wanting to read on, though! **_

_**Until next week you sexy beasts ;D**_


	3. It's Just A Jump To The Left

_**Side Note : Augh :"D Thanks so much for all of the lovely reviews 3 You're all babes who deserve infinite Bethan and cookies or whatever sweet or food you love in abundance! I'm going to try my hardest to make this chapter at least hit 2,500 words, because the last two have only been 1K, so cross your fingers for me :D And sorry if I'm making the boys ridiculously fluffy, but dear god I just need some Bethan fluff, you know? I want some fluff for fuck's sake, and that's all I'm asking for.**_

_**Costume Idea #2 : Benny as Victor Van Dort and Ethan as the male version of Emily from Corpse Bride. Emile? LAWD THAT'S SO PERFECT TO ME I WANT IT. CORPSE BRIDE BETHAN AU IS A GO!**_

_**xXxXxXx**_

With now only two weeks to go until Halloween, Whitechapel was beginning to cool down. Ethan cringed getting out of bed in the mornings, because no matter how long or cranked up his parents ran the furnace, it was always chilly in their large house. Mostly because it was void of carpet in most of the rooms, and instead replaced by wood flooring.

That morning began without exception; as soon as Ethan's alarm clock went of, his teeth were chattering and he had to keep from crying out when his bare feet hit the floor of his room. The only thing that moved him forwards was the promise of a nice, warm shower, and then something warm to eat for breakfast.

Jane looked up at him as Ethan descended from upstairs, and she grinned at him, not bothering to hide her amusement towards her older brother's wardrobe choices.

"Going to the North Pole, Ethan?"

It looked, indeed, like Ethan was traveling towards somewhere as chill-ridden as Antarctica. The teen was wearing not only a dark blue sweater, but a long sleeved shirt underneath it, and a gray hoodie over the sweater. He looked like he was heading off to a ski resort instead of early morning classes.

"Shut up, Jane," Ethan grumbled quietly as he stiffly walked over to the toaster because damn if he wasn't still freezing his ass off. "I'm cold, okay? We live in Canada so it's not like it's a big surprise to get cold this time of year."

Jane just gave him a look and continued to eat her cereal, smirking around her spoon as Ethan marveled at the hotness of his toast when it popped back up. She half expected him to begin rubbing it over his cheeks and neck.

What really warmed Ethan up was when Benny showed up to walk with him to school; he was upstairs, brushing his teeth, when the doorbell rang and Jane shouted that she would get it.

"Ethan!" she yelled, sounding as though she were trying not to laugh. "Benny's here! Maybe you'll warm each other up."

Confusion pulling his eyebrow up, Ethan quickly rinsed his mouth out and jogged back down the stairs- and was met to the wonderful sight of Benny looking almost identical to him, with three different long sleeved shirts on, and even a beanie. And he was still shivering inside of all the fabric.

Ethan laughed. "God, I hate autumn sometimes."

Benny grinned back at him as Ethan moved to scoop his backpack up, and with a goodbye to Jane, the two boys were out of the house and moving together down the sidewalk.

Almost at once, Benny reached down and grabbed Ethan's hand, tangling their frostbitten fingers together. It sent a shock of scalding heat up Ethan's arm and spine, and heart fluttering, he looked up at Benny with a warm smile.

"I'm freezing." Benny said simply. "And I kind of like you. You're warm. And soft."

Ethan snorted, and leaned into his boyfriend's side. "You're lame and I'll love it forever." he replied as his other arm curled around Benny's.

_**xXxXxXx **_

They were standing at Ethan's locker, Benny leaning against the one next to it and going on about how he wanted to see the new Captain America movie coming out, when a group of girls walked by. Normally, he ignored everyone else around them when Benny was talking to him, but what they had said caught his attention.

He was grabbing for his Algebra 2 textbook when they walked by, and one of them was explaining something to her friends.

"I'm not sure what happened, Ab, you know? One minute I was watching a movie and the next I look over at my closet and there's this awful, mangled hand in the opening. My mom heard my screaming and came rushing up, but when she got there and I finally came out from under the covers, it was gone."

Ethan's spine froze. Turning around to look at the group of girls sharply, he saw that it was a few of the girls in his and Benny's grade. The one telling the story was Ingrid Evans, and she looked as sickly white as her platinum blonde hair.

"That's terrible, Ingrid." her friend, Abby, said sympathetically.

"Thanks." Ingrid smiled at her thankfully. "It must have been my mind playing a trick on me, though. There's no way those things actually happen."

By this point, Ethan's head was whirling so badly that the rest of their conversation dropped away as they continued down the hallway and further into the crowd. First the spider, and now the ghost? Something wasn't right, and he could feel it like he could feel his psychic powers floating around just underneath his skin. But he couldn't put his finger on it.

"Ethan? Hell-oo." Benny waved one of his abnormally large hands in Ethan's face, and finally the smaller of the two snapped out of his head.

"Sorry," Ethan flushed. "I was thinking about something."

"I'm wounded." And Ethan watched as his best but dramatic friend fell backwards against the lockers, head tilted and the back of a hand over his chocolate colored eyes. "We've only been dating for a year and you're already starting to get bored of me."

Ethan snickered and closed his locker. "Benny, please- we've been friends since we were six, so I'm sure that if I'd really gotten tired of you over the past ten years, you'd have been booted earlier than now."

Benny practically flew at him, and Ethan was momentarily stunned as Benny pulled him closer and loomed above him.

"Is there another man? Another significant someone in your life? I swear, I'll do anything to win back your heart. A fight to death, if I must!"

Ethan wanted more than anything to sink into the embrace Benny had him semi-in, to fall asleep against his beating chest and get some feeling back into his aching bones. But the bell rang above them, and with a sigh, he settled for grinning sunnily up at Benny.

"Never. You're the only guy who understands why I love Comic Con more than LARP conventions."

Benny laughed. "We're the perfect match."

_**xXxXxXx**_

It wasn't until he was in Psych class, something Ethan had taken for kicks, and maybe in hopes of figuring out something else about his Seeing abilities, that he put together a piece of the puzzle.

Ingrid sat a few rows in front of him, and when he saw a giant magnet of a ghost on the whiteboard and a ghoulishly grinning pumpkin next to it over her head, he remembered.

The class had done a 'Worst Fears' assignment on the very first day of October a few weeks ago, and had to share with everyone else what theirs was.

And Ingrid's had been a dismembered hand, crawling out of a closet in the dead of night and strangling her while she slept.

Ethan suddenly felt very cold at this thought, and he curled in on himself as another part of the mystery fell into place.

That meant that whoever was behind the tormenting was inside of the school. At that very moment.

_**xXxXxXx **_

_Typical_, she thought with disgust. _It's windy and this school's circuitry is shit when it rains __**lightly**__. _

But she couldn't help the discomfort the flickering lights were bringing her. She'd come into the bathroom to fix her contact lens, which had poked out in the middle of German, and as soon as she entered the lights began to go on and off.

The quicker she got out, the better.

Creeping closer to the mirror, she cradled her lens closer to her body as she dropped her bag on the floor and opened up the front pocket. The solution for her contacts lay snugly next to her inhaler and medical emergency responder, and she disregarded the other two for favoring the solution.

She almost got an excess amount as the lights flickered out a few moments longer than they had before, and sucking in a breath, she hurried to get the solution on the lens and back into her eye.

Eventually, it went back in, but as soon as it did, the lights went out again. For more than ten seconds.

Feeling her heart rate beginning to pick erratically, she scrambled around to try and get her solution back into her pack and zipped up. It was almost impossible to do so in the complete blackness of the room, and her hands shook as all sorts of horrid things swam around in her head. The eerie echo she was making with her hurried actions did nothing to ease her nerves.

It was just as she'd gotten her backpack up on her shoulder when the lights flickered slightly, and she sighed quietly as some of the pressure in her chest receded.

But then she made the mistake of looking up at the mirror as she turned to go, and all of the blood drained from her face and to her feet.

A gorey looking woman with jewels dangling off of her body and coins stitched into the seams of her dress looked back at her. Her skin was paper white, and peeling back from her face to reveal the bones that lay underneath. She smiled, but it was a horrible grin, filled with chunks of flesh and dirt in between the gaps of her teeth.

Screaming, she felt as her arm acted of its own accord, and suddenly her fist was hitting the mirror over and over again. The glass shattered continuously as the woman taking over her own reflection tried to reach through the mirror and take her wrist. But her fingers were slippery with dark crimson, and fell away from the girl's wrist as she smashed the last bit of glass.

She could feel her heart stumbling over itself in her chest, and gasping for breath that wouldn't come to her, she fell backwards onto the bathroom floor and began to twitch uncontrollably.

When a flood of people finally came into the bathroom, few minutes after her screaming had started, the lights were back on, and the woman in ripped clothes was gone.

_**xXxXxXx **_

A lot of students were gathered outside as the paramedics loaded a fellow student of theirs onto a gurney, and the teachers kept them back as best as they could.

It took a few minutes, but after searching the sea of people Ethan finally found Benny towards the left side of the group, looking over at the ambulance with worry obvious even in the way he stood.

"Ben, what happened?" Ethan breathed as he squished up to the other boy. Benny leaned into him equally.

"Kate was in the bathroom, putting her contact back in," he explained, shivering as a gust of wind crept across the sea of students. "And I guess she just started screaming. A teacher and her class were coming back from the computer lab when they heard her and when they rushed to the bathroom, she was lying on the ground and convulsing."

Ethan saw as the paramedics fluttered over Kate to make sure she was stable, before the men picked up her gurney and loaded her onto the ambulance. Even from the twenty yards or so away, Ethan could see the blood caked on her knuckles and neck.

"What happened to her hands?"

"She busted the mirror. Swung at it until it was in pieces on the ground and then I guess she collapsed."

Ethan discreetly took Benny's hand in his own and they held onto each other tightly as the hospital owned vehicle drove away, its siren on full blast.

"She did come to, eventually, for a second." Benny told him, and finally the two locked eyes. "She tried to say something to the paramedics, but all she could be out was air. It sounded like 'buh', from where I was standing, but that's all she said before she passed out again."

Ethan looked across the front of school to see Ingrid and Abby holding onto each other, crying, and he remembered with a jolt that Kate was the other friend talking to Ingrid about the hand she had seen in her closet the previous night.

"Buh," Ethan said to himself, and then the thought of Kate's worst nightmare being in a mirror struck him like a slap in the face.

"Benny, something's going on in this town." he told his boyfriend seriously, and Benny didn't doubt his look of absolute certainty for a minute. "All of these things happening, first with Jessica and the spider, and then with Turner and the ghost. This morning, Ingrid was telling Kate and Abby about how she saw a mangled hand in her closet last night. And now this with the mirror?"

Benny took this in with thought, and his eyebrows folded down even farther. "You're right- there are too many of them to have been coincidences."

"They're worst fears." Ethan explained the thought that had been niggling at him for nearly a week now. "And I think I know what caused Kate to have a heart attack in the bathroom."

The taller boy was almost afraid to hear what Ethan's answer would be, but he asked anyways. "What?"

"Bloody Mary." Ethan said quietly, trembling at the thought of one of his most hated urban legends coming to life. "You said she made a 'buh' sound, right? That would fit, considering it happened in the bathroom and she was trying to make a B sound."

Benny shook his head. "I knew, somehow, this Halloween wouldn't go by quietly." he squeezed Ethan's hand, and began pulling him away from the side of the bus loading area. "Come on, we should go find the Vamps and see what they think."

Ethan swallowed and nodded, and together the two went off to find their three vampire friends.

It wasn't as though all of the other Supernatural things they'd faced hadn't scared Ethan, because they had; it was just that with everyone's worst fears coming into play, he wasn't sure he wanted everyone to know what his was.

_**xXxXxXx**_

_**A/N: That went splendidly longer than I thought it would :D I was in a Bethan mood though so that's probably why. I hope you liked this chapter as much as I did, because this is probably my favorite so far! Until next week you beautiful souls :3**_


	4. Bottles Of Love Potion Number Nine

_**You guys are the best like srsly omfg I love all of you :"3 I'm sorry this took longer, but I had a lot of marching band shindigs to go to, so it didn't pop out until tonight! So here is like a thousand days later than the last update haha xD **_

_**Costume Idea Of This Motherfucking Week : I, personally, think that it would be hilarious if Ethan went as a warlock with a magic wand and a pointy hat and all sorts of stereotyped magician things, and if Benny went as a Psychic with a scarf around his head and a travel sized crystal ball and tarot cards to throw at people. Just let that sink in and tell me if that isn't the type of shit those two would pull. **_

_**xXxXxXx **_

Ethan didn't get to bring the mounting issue up to the vampires until around seven o'clock that night. His parents had decided to go out that night, for a date twice that week, so Sarah was called in for an emergency babysitting session.

Jane was sitting in the living room, eating pizza and watching _Aquamarine_, while the teenagers gathered up together in the kitchen at Ethan's breakfast bar. Sarah and Erica stood in front of Ethan and Benny, who sat next to each other with their sides pressed together, and Rory floated in the air with his legs crossed gym style.

"So, you're suggesting that there's something going on around town?" Sarah asked, and she sounded incredibly unsurprised at the idea, because there was always something up in Whitechapel.

"Yeah," and Ethan sounded just as equally unsurprised. "I mean, and all of this happening so close to Halloween? I don't think that's a coincidence."

Erica was still trying to wrap her head around what Ethan had said was the cause of all of the ruckus lately. "But that seems kind of unlikely for this town, you guys. Usually whatever's supernatural is here to create a generic, mass hysteria. Nothing's spent time getting under everyone's skin before."

"Well then there's a starting point," Sarah said. "This thing likes to fester at the nerves of its victims. Does that sound like anything we know of?"

A flower of pain was beginning to bloom behind Ethan's eyes, and suddenly, all he wanted to do was lay down and sleep for a thousand years. He should have known he wouldn't be getting off easy this year, because all he wanted was a quiet holiday to spend with Benny, or the rest of his friends; and Ethan never got what he wanted in the grand scheme of things.

Sighing, he folded his arms on the bar and rested his forehead against them.

"No." he muttered into the fabric of his sweatshirt. "Not really."

"We'll have to do some research then," his babysitter pointed out unhelpfully, and then she made a point to let Erica know that 'we'll' meant everyone.

"Then the little terror on the ceiling has to do something helpful, too, besides letting what's left of his common sense slide out of his ears, hanging upside down like that."

Ethan lifted his head from his arms long enough to look up and see that, yes, indeed, Rory was now sitting upside down on his kitchen ceiling.

"This is how I get my brain to concentrate." Rory justified, and began pretending that he was meditating by making 'Ahuoom.' noises with the curl of his mouth.

"Or get yourself to throw up," Erica muttered to herself.

Ethan sighed and turned away from the sight, choosing instead to look at Benny with grim eyes.

"Every damn year." he groaned, and it was so quiet that the taller boy almost didn't hear him. But he had learned how to tune into Ethan's changes in volume, starting from pianissimo to fortissimo and back again and to the in betweens.

Benny reached out and gripped the pack of Ethan's neck with his large, warm hand, and his best friend all but melted into his touch.

"It's gonna be fine, E." Benny assured him, a crooked smile tugging at the end of his mouth. "We've battled tons of things before- this isn't any different."

Nodding, Ethan acknowledged this. Benny was right, of course, and he was just being melodramatic.

Jane walked into the now slightly chaotic kitchen to grab another can of _Coke_, entering at just the right time to witness Erica beginning to chuck oranges at Rory, who was still sitting upside down on the ceiling. Ethan watched as Rory dodged the fruit easily, Erica shouted, Sarah called them all sorts of words that sounded like 'immature', and Jane eyed them all as if they were insane.

Ethan just groaned again and began banging his head against Benny's chest.

What had his life _become_.

_**xXxXxXx **_

"Okay, so here's the plan." Benny mumbled into his ear as he looked over something from a notebook. Ethan looked highly unimpressed, as well as Sarah and Erica; Rory looked entirely too into the whole thing, choosing even to wear black that day. "We're gonna _Mission: Impossible _the hell out of this school. Keep your eyes peeled for anyone suspicious, or related to anything that would be considered a horrific sense of humor."

"I'm sorry to interrupt your pep talk," Sarah threw out, pointing a purple painted nail in her best friend's direction. "But that just summed Erica up to a tee. We're going to need a little more than that."

Erica tried to look absolutely wounded by what Sarah had said, but even she knew that there was no point in denying it; Erica was terrifying and loved being so.

Throwing his hands up, Benny just grumbled and threw the offending notebook back into his locker.

"Just keep your eyes peeled, Alice." he told Sarah. "And your blonde babe Rosalie, too."

Sarah snorted. "Whatever you say, Buffy."

_**xXxXxXx **_

When the five met up again at lunch, they decided to go over what they'd seen that day. Which was close to nothing.

"I saw Tara Higgins drawing some really weird symbols on her math homework today in Calc." Erica reported; all five of them were leaning into each other, like they were discussing something super incredibly secretive and important. Everyone else was giving them weird looks, but Erica would just glare or snap at them and the person would look away at once.

"No," Sarah shook her head in a dismissive sort of way. "Tara's in the medieval club and they're going over witchcraft and that sort of thing."

Benny looked incredibly miffed by this. "It's not like us warlocks and witches dance around moonlit circles and chant random crap. We do serious stuff, not that ridiculous nonsense Mrs. Wynona teaches."

Ethan reached under the table and placed a pale hand on Benny's knee, giving it a light squeeze. Benny calmed down at once, and the hot sparks under his skin cooled from furious to irked.

"Anyway," Rory said, raising an eyebrow at Benny's explosion. "I heard Finn Bellamy saying some stuff in a different language today. He sounded pretty angry and the words sounded pretty mystical."

Ethan's entire body rolled along with his eyes. "Rory, it was German, you moron. We have that class together with him, remember? He was doing a skit with Hannah and she metaphorically stole his wallet."

"Oh."

"What about you two?" Erica pointed at Ethan and Sarah. "Anything at all?"

Ethan said 'Nada,' at the same time Sarah said 'No," and Benny ran a hand frustratedly through his hair.

"Of course." Sitting up, Benny moved his hand under the table to grip onto Ethan's, as if the other boy was the only thing keeping him grounded. "Well, let's keep going. We've got two more classes after this, and I'm sure we can dig something up if we try hard enough."

"You know, Ben, you could be a motivational speaker." Rory told Benny with a smile. "Your talks are really blood-pumping."

Benny smiled at Rory with tight amusement. "No, I wouldn't- all of my speeches would either be 'Stop being idiots,' or 'Get over your stupid shit and do something about it.' No one would hire me. Like, ever."

"You get me going." Ethan said casually, and Erica choked on a wayward grape while Benny flushed and Sarah just hid her smile behind taking a drink of water.

_**xXxXxXx **_

When stepping into the local mall's Halloween costume store, Ethan crinkled up his nose- the whole place reeked of plastic and rubber and too much make-up.

He was stopping by _Boogie Man's _to look for some odds and ends to add to his nearly-complete costume, which he'd decided on last minute since Benny convinced him to go to Sarah's party. He needed a lot of green everything, but as it was turning out the only thing incredibly green was slime and Glow-In-The-Dark nail polish.

But it was still fun and oddly therapeutic, venturing from aisle to aisle and looking at all of the costume possibilities. There were many zombie costumes, and psychopathic murder-related pieces, and a lot of sparkly things for women. His favorite thing to do was see something cool he liked and run through a list of possibilities it could turn out to be for in his head.

He had just come in from the bookstore down at the other end of the mall, and had spent about two hours, curled up on the ground and leafing through a bunch of books in the Mythology/Lore section. Trying to figure out possibilities as to what was now haunting the town turned about to be easier said than done, and his eyes ached from all of the newly acquired information he'd gain.

None of it had been useful for his current situation, but on the 'Interesting Scale' from hole-punching papers to Alchemy, some of the things he had read were Outerspace cool.

Eventually his eyes felt as though they were going to dry up and fall out of his head, so stopping at the cafe to get a coffee, he left the shop sucking down a latte while reeking of freshly-opened pages and espresso.

His hips swayed slightly of their own accord as he heard _Monster Mash_ come on over the speakers in the store, and he snickered lightly at the little montage of _Munsters_ things tucked into a corner of the store. There was just about everything themed by the old black and white TV show, from pens to journals to stickers and ceramic mugs, and Ethan was incredibly amused by it.

Outside, as the song carried on, a few clusters of people began to talk to each other and look down the long corridor of the mall, housing a bunch of stores squeezed together. Ethan could hear raised voices, and turning to look out of the doorway, a _Munster _box set in hand, he watched as a man ran by the doorway, shouting nonsense at the top of his lungs.

And when Ethan blinked in confusion, the whole thing was over. The man was out of site, carrying on down the line of stores, and shoppers were grouped together, staring after him.

"Crazy bastard." a woman muttered as she came into Ethan's isle, looking around the shelves. A cluster of Halloween themed socks caught her attention and she looked over them, smiling to herself.

"Uh, excuse me," Ethan said as politely as he could with his mind on overdrive. "But what just happened? All I heard was the guy shouting and saw him run by."

The woman, who looked to be about thirty or so, looked up and smiled at him with amusement. "I guess the guy went to the bathroom and saw something that made him split. I think he was saying it was a mummy, but that might just have been him crying out for his mother."

Ethan watched as she shook her head and chuckled, grabbing a pair of black socks with bright orange pumpkins on them, and another with green ghosts on them, before walking away with her basket in hand.

Looking down at the box set in his hand, Ethan bit his lip and asked himself for what had to be the hundredth time what was going on in Whitechapel.

_The Munsters _smiled back up at him, in their long capes and pointy fangs and vintage black and white photography, and deciding to indulge himself, Ethan threw the box set into his basket.

He didn't leave the store with much else.

_**xXxXxXx **_

Just as they had been in the bookstore, Ethan's eyes felt as though they were burning themselves from the inside out and getting ready to drop from the sockets.

Benny was over, curled up on Ethan's bed with a laptop on the comforter and a blanket around his lean shoulders. Ethan was starfishing on the ground with his iPad on the carpet and his head propped up by his hand. They were researching, just as Ethan had only a few hours prior, and Ethan's already crammed brain was going into overload. His head felt like the food-making machine from _Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. _

Moaning almost silently, Ethan dropped his head onto the ground and carded his fingers into his hair. And left them there for about ten minutes, while silently begging for death.

"What's up, dude?" Benny asked from the bed, and Ethan was reminded that that was another reason why he loved Benny so much- they might have been dating but he didn't feel the need to always call Ethan things like Baby and Love. It was more comfortable hearing him say dude, or E.

"Nothing." Ethan muttered into his carpet. "Just sick of reading stuff on all sort of batshit supernatural things. I did it for three hours at _Noel's _today and now my head feels like the space underneath someone's bed that's been stuffed with socks and dirty clothes and forgotten homework."

"Let's take a break, then."

Ethan looked up at Benny and saw as he closed the lid of his computer and set it on the ground; still curled up ridiculously in one of Ethan's comforters, he reached a pale hand out from the cave of navy fabric and reached for him.

It took Ethan less than ten seconds to scramble up off of the floor and snuggle up to Benny, who also wrapped the blanket around him. It was like a furnace and Ethan realized as if for the first time how cold it was in his room.

They folded into each other and as if by magic (something Ethan wouldn't be surprised by, if it were the case) the stress of the day and the ache in his head mellowed out almost entirely.

"I love fighting the beasts of Whitechapel." Ethan mumbled into Benny's neck, where he'd pressed his cold nose into. "I really do. But I wish that we got holidays off like everyone else does, you know?"

Benny laughed softly and laid them backwards more comfortably into the mound of pillows on Ethan's bed.

"Yeah, I know what you mean."

_**xXxXxXx **_

When Samantha came upstairs to get the boys for dinner, she found them curled up together on Ethan's bed, fast asleep with their computers on the ground and some light music playing from Ethan's iPod.

Smiling, she closed the door and continued to let them sleep with a bittersweet pang in her heart. She loved both of her boys to death but she hated how fast they were growing up.

If they remained Juniors for the rest of their lives, teenagers with drama and each other to hold onto, she would be the happiest mom in the entire world.

"Where're the boys, Sam?" Ross asked her when she came into the dining room.

"Sleeping." she told him with a warm smile on her face. "I guess they were doing homework or something together and just conked out."

Ross smiled back. "Alright."

Jane made a face at the thought of the two being all snuggly and dripping with love. "Gross."

_**xXxXxXx **_

_**A/N: Again, I am soooooooooooooooooo sorry that this took a while, but since school just started my brain has been scrambled eggs and you know?! Plus marching band is kind of a kick in the ass with all of the practicing and ugh any bandos out there that feel the pain? It's hard as fuck work man. **_

_**But I hope you enjoyed this, and I should have the next chapter up some time this week so I can catch up!**_


	5. Somethin' Strange In Your Neighborhood

_**Side Note : You guys are fucking awesome. Just- don't change. Here's all of my love wrapped up at gay kisses and infinite food :3 **_

_**As much as I hate to say it, this is the last costume idea for the story since everyone's actual costumes will be revealed in the next chapter, so I'll make it extra special and give one for all five of the gang instead of just Benny and Ethan. This time I was thinking of them all going as horrific monsters, like Benny as a vampire, Ethan as a the Headless Horseman, Rory as a poltergeist, Erica as a banshee and Sarah as a wendigo. I mean, there's gotta be some of the originality in Halloween, right?**_

_**Anywho, here's chapter five. Thanks for understanding my schedule difficulties!**_

_**xXxXxXx**_

When walking to school the next morning, Ethan was more grateful of the cold Canadian wind than he had even been before in his life. After he and Benny had fallen asleep together, his mom had let them stay that way for nearly three hours, resulting in his hyper-awareness until the wee hours of the morning. On a school night, no less, so he put his open time to good use and researched even further into what could possibly be causing chaos around Whitechapel.

His brain had been so stuffed full of different urban legends and folklore and greek myths that he thought he was going to explode. But the sharpness of the autumn weather outside helped to clear his head as he walked to school. It was kind of like the moment when taking a really big, important test and getting to watch a movie afterwards in class.

The only downside was that Benny wasn't with him- he'd left at the same time as Ross and Samantha to get to school early and take a test, so Ethan was left to walk alone. But the silence was more than welcomed.

His cheeks were bright red by the time he made it to school, and it looked as though someone had slapped him or smeared blush anywhere they could reach. Everyone he passed looked at him with pity because most of them had cars to drive to school in- Ethan still had to save up for one, and thus was left to walk.

"Jesus Ethan, you look like someone shoved your head into a snow bank." Rory said helpfully when he finally scuttled up to the group. Ethan blanched.

"Thanks, dude. I guess the fact that I can't tell if I'm frowning or smiling wasn't a total give away."

"That's why I got you some hot chocolate from the school cafe."

And suddenly there was a warm body behind him, and a large hand holding a steaming cup of hot chocolate in front of him, and Ethan almost wanted to cry.

"You're the best, Benny." he practically sobbed, and forwent drinking the hot chocolate in favor of putting the styrofoam cup up to his face.

Benny grinned wildly at him and kissed the side of his head, and Ethan leaned into his side as the three vampires rolled their eyes at them.

"You two are so sickening." Erica scoffed, and Benny replied, "Thanks, so are you."

Just a regular morning at Whitechapel High.

Sarah decided to get in the middle of the two taller members of the group before an actual all-out battle started, and clearing her throat, she produced the local paper.

"He was probably also buttering Ethan up," she said. "because we've got another case of the creepies on our hands."

Ethan's heart almost broke, wanting nothing but the morning off and getting the complete opposite with an up of hot chocolate and his furnace-like boyfriend.

"What happened this time?" he asked, preparing himself for the absolute worse.

"Becca Gomez was driving home last night and someone kept flashing their lights at her from behind." Erica started off. "When she got out of the car finally, there was a rusty hook dangling off of her back seat. And she didn't even notice that there was someone else in the car with her until the flasher told her what he was doing."

Ethan's entire body shuddered, because he remembered the Hookman being one of his worst nightmares, too.

"But there's more," the other girl broke in, and scanning through the front page, Sarah searched for the other story. "Wendy Porter's dad was out in the corn field, gathering up the rest of it when apparently his scarecrow came to life and chased him around with rake."

"God, we've got to get this under control before someone else gets hurt. Or killed." Ethan insisted, and the whole group nodded.

"We'll keep digging today in class." Benny agreed, and then they had to split up to go to class.

Ethan's skin crawled the entire time, and couldn't shake off the feeling that something awful was going to end up happening sometime soon. So close to Halloween, it could be just about anything.

**xXxXxXx **

"I thought that since it's so close to Halloween, we'd talk about our favorite scary movies. Maybe find out if there's really a reason why we like them so much."

Super, Ethan hissed in his head. Another opportunity for the creature to pick someone out.

The class, for comfort purposes or whatever the hell their teacher wanted to blame it on, sat in bean bag chairs instead of at desks for psychology. So they all pulled the bean bags closer into the circle they were in, and Mrs. Renner started off by saying that hers was Friday the 13th, probably because camping exhilarated her and she found pinstripe suits to be fascinating.

This only proved farther why everyone thought she was entirely fit for the job as a psychology teacher, because she was a good combination of wacky and relaxed.

As the circle went on, everyone said the usual movies like _Halloween_, _Halloween Town_, _Casper the Friendly Ghost_, _It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown_, and _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_.

But then when it came around to where Kate and Ingrid were sitting together, another friend of theirs, Monica, was next to them and she said confidently that _Nightmare on Elm Street _was her favorite horror movie because the thought of getting into people's heads was fascinating.

"That's really sadistic, Monica." Abby didn't look intrigued or amused at all. "That's what put Kate in the hospital."

"I was just being honest, Abb. Don't get so worked up about it."

Abby just set her jaw and looked away to glance at Ingrid, who looked just as frosty and irked. Monica looked faintly pleased by the reactions, and out of all the times Ethan's supernatural instinct had kicked in, this went far past the red alert.

"Ladies, let's try and be supportive of each other, okay?" Mrs. Renner suggested, and Monica's entire body rolled along with her eyes.

"Sure."

When Mrs. Renner wasn't looking Ethan texted Benny.

I think we've got a lead, Ben.

_**xXxXxXx**_

When Ethan got home, he immediately trooped up to his bedroom and got to work on cracking who and/or what was terrorizing the town. With new search ideas in mind, he practically sprinted home with Benny trying to keep up, and only gave the other boy a swift kiss before running inside.

And now, nearly three and a half hours later of non stop picking apart of the internet, it was dinner time and Ethan hardly had a clue until his mother came upstairs and forced him downstairs for dinner.

"Ethan, dinner's ready!" Samantha called as she came up the stairs.

"Can you just bring it up here, please?" he shouted over his shoulder. "I'm kind of busy. Lots of researching for this class."

Ethan never figured it out, but somehow Samantha had the ability to appear behind him as though she flew, and when he felt her looking over his shoulder not two seconds after she'd called out for him he nearly fell out of his chair.

"Native American mythology?" his mom muttered. "Ethan, what class is this for?"

"Uh, English." he spit out, and gave himself a metaphorical handshake for the good, fast lie. "We're learning about Native American folklore and stuff like that. Just wanted to do some extra background checking on it."

Samantha smiled, but gripped his shoulders firmly. "That's great, honey, but you really need to come down and eat some dinner. You're skinny enough as it is."

"I will, Mom, I just need to finish-"

"Ethan."

They fought lightly over Ethan needing to come downstairs and eat, and eventually Samantha had to physically pull Ethan out of his chair. He ended up on the floor, laughing, and following Samantha downstairs to eat.

"I had to pull your son away from his computer," she told Ross. "Literally. He's addicted to the thing, I swear."

The entire family laughed about it and settled into a conversation about strange addictions, but it wasn't until Ross brought up something he'd heard about on the radio that everything fell into place.

"This one guy was addicted to eating glass. It was really amusing."

That word echoed in Ethan's brain like a pair of blinding lights through the dark, and in a slideshow of sorts he saw all of the weird things that had happened, Monica's biting smile, and the word amusing bleeding together like a watercolor painting.

He shoveled the last bit of his dinner into his mouth and shouted out an excuse before running back up stairs, tripping over his own feet.

_**xXxXxXx **_

Ethan couldn't get to school fast enough the next morning, and even ran into the sharper corner leading to the junior's lockers. He hardly noticed everyone laughing at him through the haze in their sleep-deprived heads.

Benny was in the middle of a sentence when Ethan barely avoided knocking him over.

"Guys, I figured it out!"

Ethan was quite the sight, with his hair sticking up even more than usual and dark circles under his eyes from staying up so late, but no one noticed but Benny. He let on no more concern than the light creasing of his eyebrows.

"What?" Erica was hardly awake enough, and hadn't been paying attention to Benny's nerd rant at all.

"I figured out what's messing with everyone!"

A collective breath was taken from the other four teens, and eyes owlish, they all stared at him expectantly.

He grinned with exhaustion. "We're dealing with a Trickster."

_**A/N: That took me like five hours to write because I kept getting distracted. Also my dad's watching Roadhouse and I just saw Patrick Swayze's golden ass so I literally can't even function anymore. So I hope this was good and that you're looking forward to the next chapter as much as I am :D I love the gang's costumes to death!**_


	6. He Did The Monster Mash

_**Side Note : Thanks again for the last set of reviews because you guys are all super super amazing and fuck I would be nowhere without you, you know? :"D Sorry this didn't come out a little earlier, either, but hey, this means two next week to finish the story up, right? And yes, I got this idea from Supernatural but I'm sure it doesn't push any copyright laws (hopefully). Gabriel's the cutest little shit, isn't he? Ugh. Sabriel makes my knees watery. Also be glad I took a five hour nap today or this might not have come out at all. Yay for procrastination!**_

_**Sadly, there will be no costume idea for this week since the five's costumes will be revealed in this chapter, but here's a hint: the costumes are all secretly mega-nerdy. Even Erica's costume will be geek-related. Hope that's enough until you get through the chapter!**_

_**xXxXxXx**_

"Not even just a tiny, tiny hint?"

"Benny, if you don't stop pestering me I'm going to run you through with my spear."

"Aha! Your costume has a spear!"

Ethan groaned, dropping his head down onto the lunch table; Benny had been trying to get him to spill his costume all day and it was slowly starting to do Ethan in. He'd only been putting it together for about a month and he had to admit that it was rather kickass- he didn't want to ruin that by giving it away mere hours before the party.

And it wasn't like Benny was revealing anything about his costume, either. The boy had been oddly clammy about the whole thing, hadn't even _said _what spectrum of Halloween it would cover- scary, funny, cosplay-ish. So Ethan felt as though he had a right to keep his own costume to himself.

"Benny, you're not in the right boat to talk- I've asked you about your costume and you refuse to tell anyone what it is." Ethan looked up at his boyfriend with a raised eyebrow, and Benny had the decency to look slightly ashamed.

"If I jump boats, will you tell me _then_?" he asked with a hopeful look on his face, and Ethan was so close to giving in that he had to purposely push Benny's face away so he didn't have to look at it.

"No." Ethan replied back with finality. "Now eat your food. You're so much of a bean pole as it is that I fear you'll break any moment."

Sarah was both unimpressed by the two and slightly amused, and Ethan could see this by the way she fought back a smile and took another bite of her salad. "If you two are done acting like you just walked off of _As The World Turns_, we still need to come up with a decent plan for tonight. Ethan, how did you say we'd catch this Trickster?"

"Well, Tricksters like sweets, and humor that can be bent into horror, so Halloween's kind of like their Christmas." he explained, taking a bite out of his PB&J. "All we have to do is find it and run it through with a wooden stake."

"So basically we're dealing with a vampire whose appetite is for scaring the hell out of people instead of drinking their blood." Erica snarked from next to Sarah. "Awesome."

Ethan rolled his eyes. "But what I'm saying is that it might be easier to catch them tonight at Sarah's because there are so many possible targets, and an endless amount of candy."

"Yeah, don't be such a blonde, Erica."

Both Erica and Rory looked irked by what Benny had said, and together they fixed a pair of murderous stares on the warlock.

"You must be going as a piece of Sirloin, Benny," Erica murmured, and ran her tongue across the ends of her fangs as they slid from her gums. "Because you're just _begging _to be torn to shreds."

"Hey." Both of the blonde vampires looked at Ethan as he shook his head and reached up to lay a hand on Benny's cheek. "Lay off. I like him- he's got a pretty face."

Rory snorted and Erica just looked humored as their fangs popped back and they continued to eat lunch.

Their blonde friend looked up at them through the curtain of his goldenrod bangs. "Mind your pretty face, then, Ethan."

"I'm absolutely wounded." And Benny did look surprisingly hurt. "I didn't know I was just a face to you, Ethan."

But Ethan wasn't going to take the bait. "I'm still not going to tell you what my costume is, Ben. Stop pouting."

"Damn."

_**xXxXxXx **_

"Hey, Mom?" Ethan yelled down the stairs, and Samantha sighed at the panic in his voice.

"It's in your closet, Ethan." she shouted back, and heard his muffled thanks echo down into the kitchen.

Ethan had practically tore up his entire room, looking for the major key in his Halloween costume; it was a helmet, made of pure gold with long horns that curled back until they almost touched his head. It had taken him forever to make, but in the end after adding some grease-like paint to make it look a little weary, the helmet had looked incredible and Ethan had been very proud of himself.

Now, putting in on, Ethan's costume was complete and he stood back to admire it in his body-length mirror on the inside of his closet.

This year for Halloween, after seeing the Marvel movie many, many times, Ethan was going to Sarah's party as Loki. And he thought that the emerald cloak countered the golden helmet well, making his already dark hair look like ebony and his eyes glitter as though he'd seen war and betrayed his entire family as Loki had.

He looked fucking magnificent.

But the admiration he was relishing in, a type of vanity he only allowed himself to feel when saving the town from peril, was cut short as the doorbell rang, causing his heart to leap into his throat. This was the part he had been fearing the most- the possibility that Benny wouldn't like his costume at all.

He listened with bated breath as Samantha walked from the kitchen to the front door and opened it, greeting Benny with a warm hello as she always did.

"Ethan!" Samantha yelled up at him. "Benny's here!"

Taking a deep breath, Ethan told himself again that it would be okay, that if Benny really didn't like the costume he would keep it to himself, but it didn't help much because Ethan could read his best friend like a book, and if Benny found something distasteful, usually Ethan knew at once. He scooped up his cellphone, Loki's staff that doubled as his wooden stake, and adjusted his helmet one more time before exiting his bedroom and shutting the door behind him.

When he managed to wobble his way down the stairs, he found Benny and Samantha locked in a light conversation about his and Ethan's plans for that night, and when Benny finally turned to look up at him, Ethan forgot how to breathe.

Benny's hair was as wild and shaggy as ever, but his clothes were very, very different. Instead of wearing jeans and his usually baggy shirts and sweatshirts, Benny was wearing a bodysuit that was skin-tight. The top was a deep blue color that reminded Ethan of the ocean, and his black pants curved over his legs in a horrifyingly delicious way. Over his heart was a symbol stitched into the fabric that looked faintly like a triangle with a warped bottom, and very discreetly, poking up under his hair, were a pair of pointed ears.

Benny was going as Spock for Halloween.

"Oh, you boys look incredible." Samantha gushed, looking ready to burst into tears. Ethan felt the same. "Let me go get my camera!"

If Ethan could feel his brain working in his skull, he would have whined and protested such a thing, but at that moment he couldn't remember his own _name_, let alone the word no. Benny looked back at him with much the same expression, with owlish eyes and his mouth slightly ajar, and Ethan thought that they must look like a pair of loons.

"Your costume," Ethan choked out after a moment of the staring contest. "It's, uh, awesome."

Benny looked down at himself, almost self-consciously, and looking back up at Ethan, his shoulders relaxed. "Yours, too. Jesus, I thought you'd go as something simple, like a damn ninja or something but holy crap, E."

And it was as though the whole world had been lifted off of Ethan's shoulders, because Benny liked his costume, dammit, the one he'd spent a whole month making, and that was the biggest reward he could have possibly gotten.

Taking his helmet off of his head, Ethan swept down the last couple of stairs and stepped up to Benny, who didn't even blink at the invasion of space. Ethan could see the prosthetic Vulcan ears even at his angle directly in front of Benny, and this made his blood burn through his entire body.

"You are an _asshole_," he told Benny, but he smiled to show that he didn't mean it. Mostly. "You know that I have a thing for Vulcans."

"And you know that I have a thing for Tom Hiddleston, so I guess we're even now." Benny replied, and then he cupped Ethan's flushed cheeks and planted a great, big kiss right on Ethan's grinning mouth.

Though Ethan didn't think it was possible, his blood pounded even harder in his ears and made his knees weaker than ever, and he had to grip onto Benny's sinfully tight Starfleet shirt to keep from falling onto the ground. There was hunger behind their kiss, something that was only supposed to happened when they were _alone, for God's sakes_, but apparently the fact that Samantha was only ten feet away, digging through her purse in the kitchen didn't seem to matter much.

They pulled away though when she did manage to find her camera, and announced as much as she made her way back into the foyer, muttering to herself about how fast the boys had grown up.

Benny gave him one last peck, and a 'You're so gorgeous, Ethan, _damn you_.' before pulling away, the only contact remaining between them being Benny's arm over Ethan's armor-clad shoulders and Ethan's looped around Benny's tight uniform-clad sides. The change in contact made him dizzy, and he wished Samantha would go back into the kitchen so that they could continue to make out against the staircase.

"You boys are just getting so old _so _fast." she tsked again, her face wobbling as she worked to turn the camera on. "I remember when you were both seven, going trick-or-treating as Batman and Robin together."

"I remember that," Benny laughed, looking down at Ethan. "I was Batman."

"Yeah, because you were mean in first grade and threatened to stop being my friend if I didn't go as Robin."

Benny's grin widened. "I guess some things never change because I'm still taller than you and basically thrumming with magic."

Samantha was too busy monkeying with the camera to see Benny's teasing eyebrow wiggle, and Ethan just bit the inside of his cheek and pinched Benny's hip.

"Get closer, you two." she ordered them, and Ethan didn't think that was such a good idea because anymore contact between them would lead to a very embarrassing situation indeed. But Benny ignored this logic (which was stupid, seeing as how _he _was the one dressed as Spock) and simply pulled Ethan closer so that their sides were slotted together just right. Ethan swallowed down his building lust and just let the warmth pool in his stomach as Samantha readied her camera.

"Say cheese," she said automatically, and Ethan didn't complain because his mom looked ready to collapse, and he understood that she was just having a moment of nostalgia. Wishing Ethan was still in elementary school and fighting to say spaghetti the right way. Benny missing his two front teeth and lisping every time he said something about _Harry Potter_.

They crammed even closer together and grinned, and Ethan wished to stay in that moment, too. It was probably the happiest he had ever been.

But after the flash went off and Samantha examined the picture to make sure it looked okay, the air of drowning in childhood memories was lost, and she was kissing their foreheads and telling them to go have fun.

As the two boys left the warmth of the Morgan house and went into the October chill together, Ethan told himself that it was not the time to reminisce about his childhood with Benny and his family- there would be time for that later, and right now he had a town to save.

Again.

As they got into Benny's car, the driver paused to smile at Ethan over the hood.

"You made a better Batman, though." was what he said, smiling fondly and full of nostalgia, as well, before opening his door and getting in. If it was possible, Ethan swooned harder than ever and when he managed to pry his door open, he couldn't stop himself from kissing Benny a second time.

Or a third.

_**xXxXxXx **_

When they got to Sarah's house, a large victorian styled home made of dark bricks and warmth, it was the senior who answered the door. The two boys were taken aback by the girl's costume, though, because they had expected her to go as something like a witch.

Instead, she was decked out in a black trench coat, a fake gun attached to her hip and her hair falling in curls around her shoulders. She was absolutely stunning, looked as cool as a fucking bag of ice with a pair of sunglasses perched on her nose, but that's not what stopped the two.

"Sarah." Benny said after a moment of openly staring. "Are you dressed as Neo from _The Matrix_?"

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Yes, Benny. Contrary to what you two seem to believe, I've seen a few movies that aren't about teenage romance."

"You look great." Ethan blurted out, and Sarah grinned.

"Thanks, Ethan. Now get the hell in here because we need to find Erica and Rory and get set up for this whole thing."

They kicked the door shut behind them and immediately after stepping inside, Ethan and Benny were met by the sight of many of their classmates decked out in costumes and dancing in Sarah's livingroom. Currently, _Ghostbusters _was playing over the large stereo system and everyone was swaying to it wildly, the colored lights from the ceiling making them all look faintly alien.

"They're over by the basement door." Sarah shouted to them, and they wormed their way through the mass of bodies covered in fabric and plastic.

When they finally found the other two vampires, Ethan admitted that he needed to stop being shocked by the people in Whitechapel; Rory was, not surprisingly, decked out in something absolutely nerdaromic, attending Sarah's party as Sora from _Kingdom Hearts_, but Erica was dressed up as another movie character.

Nude colored tights stretched up her long legs, a golden leotard coated in nothing but glitter winked at them as the lights caught them, and a top hat sat on her head the same white color as her jacket.

"And Erica," Benny said, almost hysterically. "Erica is Columbia from_ Rocky Horror_. When the hell have you two even watched cool movies? We have to find out you actually watch quality films ourselves because you didn't even _tell _us. Why?"

Erica snorted. "Because _you've _watched them, that's why. You don't realize it, but every single one of the movies you two see you watch it until you know the script by heart. It gets kind of annoying trying to hear Keanu Reeves and Tim Curry over your idiocy."

Benny's mouthed worked, as though it wanted to come up with a protest, but Ethan knew it was a lost cause. Erica was absolutely right.

"Well, anyways," Sarah intervened. "Do you all have stakes? And back-up stakes? And then some back-up stakes for your back-up stakes?"

Everyone pulled out some sort of prop to their costume that doubled as a wooden stake, Benny's being his phaser, Sarah's being her fake machine gun, Rory's being a large key, and Erica's being her cane.

"Good." Sarah smiled. "Let's dance."

_**xXxXxXx**_

She meant this literally, of course, because there would be nothing to do until the Trickster showed up and started the party off with a brand new horror. So while Sarah and Erica danced together on the other side of living room, Benny and Ethan danced together as well. And it was kind of awkward because Ethan was a bad dancer as it was, but now he was wearing a helmet with two horns the same length as his arms, and he was trying not to hit Benny with them or gouge out anyone's eyes.

"I wish this thing would just show up and let us get it over with." Benny murmured into his ear, sighing.

"Yeah, I know." Ethan replied back with the same tenseness. "It's putting me on edge, just standing here and waiting for something to happen."

"I'm concerned, mainly, about what's going to happen if we find it." Benny's hands tightened on his hips. "What we'll see. I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to see my worst fear brought to life any time soon."

Ethan pulled his head away from Benny's to look up at his friend, and the look of raw terror that began to pick up frightened the hell out of him.

"We'll just have to push through it, you know? Tell ourselves it's not real, that we'll be fine as long as we just kill it."

Benny's fingers dug into his sides even more, not painfully but desperate, and he licked his lips. "It's not that simple, Ethan."

Ethan opened his mouth to ask what he meant, but at the same time he took in a breath, a scream emitted from upstairs and both of their heads whipped around to see what had happened.

Olivia, a junior in their art class, was screaming loudly and tripping her way over to the staircase with her long dress tangling around her feet. She looked like Daenerys from _Game of Thrones_, with her silver hair floating along behind her, but she looked less graceful practically rolling down the staircase. A friend of hers dressed as a dancer from the 80s caught her at the end, and asked her what was wrong.

Olivia pointed up at the staircase with tears gleaming in her eyes, and Ethan watched as a pumpkin rolled ominously from the hallway disappearing into a stretch of rooms. It had a face carved into it, the teeth jagged and the eyes somehow menacing though they were nothing more than triangles.

"I saw him!" she choked out. "I saw the Headless Horseman, Taylor!"

As if on queue, a loud whining sound followed Olivia's cries, and Ethan looked at Benny with a tight, wry smile.

"Show time."

Benny sighed, and pulled Ethan along to grab Sarah, Erica, and Rory, who was sitting nearby talking to another guy dressed up as a _Halo _character.

"Let's kick this Trickster right in the ass."

_**xXxXxXx**_

_**This chapter went much better than I thought it would xD Yay. But I hope you liked it, and I'm thinking I'll post the seventh chapter on Monday, and then post the final chapter on Halloween. **_

_**Anyone going as anything this year? I'm personally too, em, awkward as a gangly teenager to go trick-or-treating anymore and everyone's too lame to have a Halloween party, but yeah. I'll probably sit at home and watch Return to Halloweentown and eat Butterfingers and cry because my social life is a piece of shit. **_

_**But anyways, until next time!**_


	7. Inside Of A Killer Thriller Tonight

_**Side Note : Another one, so soon? Weeew :D I would say I'm getting better at this but trust me when I say that if I wasn't on a deadline this probably wouldn't come out for like three weeks because my writing muse tends to hop around to different fandoms. But, alas, here's chapter seven! Thank for the reviews and all of the lovely things said in the last chapter! I love you guys, and you know what, party at my house! We can be antisocial nerds together. **_

_**Just a warning: this chapter will have large amount of shitty cliche-ness, and I'm sure you'll know what I mean when the two boys run into the Trickster. Sorry if it was uber stupid and predictable, but gOD I NEED SOME BETHAN FLUFFIES. **_

_**xXxXxXx**_

Knowing that the single thing they were hunting was no more than a set of stairs away was making Ethan light-headed, and having to push through the throng of students to reach the other three was doing nothing to help. He felt woozy and sick with fear, but at the same time his heart rate picked up and his adrenaline soared, because he was ready to destroy this son of a bitch once and for all.

He held onto Benny's hand as tightly as he could without hurting his boyfriend as they wormed their way over to the vampires, and Benny gripped back just as tight to ensure that he wouldn't get sucked into the mass of people doing the _Time Warp_.

"Sarah!" Benny shouted. "Erica!"

The two girls dancing together looked up at them with goofy grins on their faces, Sarah's sunglasses on top of her head and Erica's top hat slightly askew. Ethan hated to break up the fun they were having already.

"What's up?" Sarah shouted back with a small laugh.

Benny used his phaser to gesture wildly at the staircase, and when Sarah saw Olivia screaming and crying hysterically, her grin dropped away at once.

She looked at Ethan and Benny, who had managed to finally get out of the cluster of monsters and fictional characters gyrating against each other and screaming along with the song playing.

"Is it here?" she asked them, and Benny nodded back grimly.

Erica sneered at the top floor as the shadow of the Headless Horseman slowly melted away into nothingness, and her grip on the glittering cane tightened. "Let's gut this thing."

Benny nodded in agreement and went over to drag Rory away from his friend, who looked a little remorseful but otherwise absolutely chill. But it was hard to tell from the orange glass obscuring his face.

"Dude, we've got to go!" Benny countered as Rory protested. "It's here!"

"But we just got into a discussion on _Zelda_-"

"Rory, this one time only, _just this one time_-" Benny shouted back, and if there wasn't a possibility that they were all going to die that night, Ethan would have laughed. "I need you to focus and cooperate. When we gank this damn Trickster, you can go back to talking with Boy Wonder, okay? We've got shit to do first."

Ethan drug his eyes away from the rather humorous sight to look at Sarah. "Sarah, how many room are there upstairs?"

"Uh, four." she calculated. "My room, my parents' room, the guest room and the bathroom."

"Alright, well there are still a bunch of rooms down here to look through." Ethan scanned the room with his eyes, though it was hard to distinguish anything through the lights and crowds of people. "You, Erica and Benny stay down here. Me and Rory will go upstairs and see if the Trickster's still up there."

"Okay."

She hurried over to where Benny and Rory were still going at each other's throats and pulled them away from each other, telling them the plan and looking for confirmation. When she got it, she sent Ethan a thumbs up and the pool of worry in Ethan's stomach tightened.

Rory moved over to him and they held onto their stakes tightly as they ran up the staircase together, already looking down the darkened hallway.

"I'll check out Sarah's room and the guest room." Ethan told Rory, who nodded. "You get her parents' room and the bathroom. Check the closets, too."

They separated with matching looks of worry and conflicting bravery, and although Ethan remembered how much he hated the darkness, he sucked in a breath and straightened himself out as he made his way down the dark hallway.

The room that belonged to Sarah was very distinguished, with a beautiful decal on the white painting of the door. It was black with hints of purple and blue, and reminded Ethan of the incense the store at the mall burned.

Opening the door, he turned the light on at once and blinked at the harsh contrast from being in the dark for nearly an hour.

Sarah's room was what Ethan expected it to be- warm, with posters on the wall, a fluffy bedspread, and lots of essentials like perfume and nail polish and lotion sitting around. It was a place that Ethan could see Sarah occupying, studying or listening to her iPod or chilling out with Erica.

But, sadly, there was no Trickster lurking, even when Ethan looked in her closet and under the bed.

Shutting the light off and creeping down the hallway, Ethan was sucked back into complete darkness again and he felt as though he were in every single cliche horror movie he'd seen. He was the idiotic main character, creeping his way down to his impending doom, and there was an audience waiting just beyond a screen, yelling at him to stop and go back.

He almost did turn back, his heart lurching up into his throat, but he remembered how many people would get hurt if he did. Instead of thinking about seeing Jigsaw or Jason Voorhees, Ethan thought of how when he got home he and Benny were going to curl up together and watch movies. It kept him going.

The guest room was much the same when Ethan opened the door and flicked the light on. The bed was off to the side, covered in a lovely white blanket with a rose in the very middle, and there was a lone dresser off against the other wall.

But unlike Sarah's room, there was somebody else in the room with Ethan. He couldn't see their face, or much of them at all for that matter, but the shirt they were wearing was terribly familiar and Ethan felt a sense of deja vu fill him from the inside out.

He must have let out a noise, because suddenly the person in the middle of the room stirred, and with a groan they stumbled to their feet and turned around to face them.

It was Benny, but he was no longer wearing his Spock costume. Instead, he had on a deep green polo with black stripes and a pair of his old blue jeans. The only thing unusual about him was the fact that the skin on his face was peeling off, and his white lips were covered in blood.

He was a zombiefied version of himself, looking exactly as he had back in freshman year when the Lotta Latte had gone horribly, horribly bad.

Ethan's breath quickened as he stumbled back in an attempt to get away from this terrifying version of his best friend, but he miscalculated and ended up against the wall, so Ethan remained pinned as Benny's clone crept closer. The warmth had gone from his brown eyes and was replaced by the coldness death brought upon someone, but the pupils were starting to cloud over from lack of nutrients. They seemed to both stare right through Ethan and not look at him at all, and it was so uncanny that the junior thought he was going to being hyperventilating.

"Oh god, Ben." he choked up, wetting his lips. "What happened to you?"

He knew exactly what had happened, because he'd been having nightmares about this exact situation since it had happened. Ever since Benny had been bitten, the nagging possibility that someday Ethan wouldn't be able to save him had pressed in on him like collapsing walls. That one time there wouldn't be a cure to the supernatural thing eating Benny up and that one day Ethan would have to kill Benny to make sure he didn't come back and hurt someone else.

Because that would just be the cherry on top of the chocolate sundae that was their lives- Benny dying from the things they'd killed countless times. It would be horribly ironic and Benny's last words would probably be used pointing out the dark humor in what had happened.

The zombie version of Benny was looking at him almost curiously, his head tilted on an angle and mouth slightly open. His hand reached up to touch Ethan's face, and he was cold to the touch, as though made of clay found deep in the earth. It stopped Ethan's heart all together because one of his favorite things about Benny was the fact that his best friend was basically a walking furnace, and sometimes his warmth was the only thing that kept Ethan sane in their whirlwind of lives.

"I'm so sorry." Ethan whispered, and Benny's head just tilted even more so as he studied Ethan. The shorter of the two had forgotten all about the mission at hand, too wrapped up in his worst nightmare being portrayed right in front of him to remember that there was something more important he needed to do besides crying.

They stared at each other, Ethan's eyes watery and mouth a thin line of remorse, and Benny remained curious with his head tilted like an owl's and his eyes resembling _Count Chocula _cereal.

But then Benny let out a kind of hissing sound, the kind cats made when seeing something they hated, and he bared his rotting teeth at Ethan menacingly. Ethan knew what came next, knew that Benny would go right for his throat, and though he killed Benny every single time in the dream before he did, Ethan couldn't move this time around.

That was when the door slammed open and with a shout, Ethan watched as Rory's blonde hair streaked in like a firecracker and yanked Benny's doppelganger away from a cringing Ethan. Benny's hackles rose and he hissed back at Rory, who looked just as frightened at the sight of one of his friends transformed into a flesh eating beast.

Shaken out of his stupor, Ethan scrambled for his staff and just managed to get the top off when Rory shouted out in surprise. Benny was shaking violently, the shell of his copy crumbling away, and the two backed away as the zombie melted back to reveal a girl with smokey black eyes and long hair that fell down her back like black paint.

It was Monica, from Ethan's Psychology class.

"I knew it was you." he shook out, swallowing away the nausea rising in his throat.

Monica laughed sarcastically. "Well, you two yahoos seem to be more brain than brawn. I'm shocked, honestly."

She fixed them both with her piercing onyx stare, and it was as though spiders were crawling around inside of Ethan's stomach.

"Too bad not everyone knows what's coming for them." Her grin was a pearly white color, so much that they almost glowed green in contrast to her dark assets. "Shame, because I'd expect more from your Vulcan crew members."

One second she was solid, and the next Ethan watched as Monica exploded into a cloud of smoke and slithered her way down the furnace leading from the guest room to the downstairs.

"God, she's going after Benny next!" Rory shouted, and they almost tripped over each other in their haste to get back downstairs and find the other three.

_**xXxXxXx **_

Benny had almost forgotten how much he hated basements until it was his job to go into Sarah's and look for the Trickster.

Everything was both too loud and too quiet, with there being no sound and then the creaking of the ceiling and then the popping of the dryer and washer. He had the lights on, though they were only naked bulbs hanging down from the beams up above, and still there were too many shadows for him to relax to his best.

When looking around the space cluttered up by nothing than a few boxes, Benny saw nothing and no one else; the main area of the basement was clear, and that alone should have put him at some form of ease.

But there were also other rooms in the labyrinth of the basement, and something told him that if he went looking around in them, he wouldn't like what he found. But he went anyways, just to say he had, and he crossed his fingers for luck around the handle of his stake/phaser.

The first extra room was just a bathroom with nothing more than a toilet and a sink, but the ominous stains on the tile flooring made his skin crawl. There was a single bulb screwed in above the mirror that made his face look even paler than it normally did, and washed out his skin, and he felt as though if he looked too long he would become translucent and disappear all together.

The other room was boarded off by two walls of wood and a small door, and when Benny opened it up, he was surprised to see that it was full of toys. It had obviously been Sarah's old playroom, full to the brim still with Barbies and dresses made for five year olds and other _Disney _related things. A small TV set sat on top of a dresser, a VCR on one side and a DVD player on the other, and Benny knew that if he opened the top drawer it would be filled with nothing but children's movies.

But there was something out of place in the room, besides the phantom images of a younger Sarah playing with her toys and watching _George of the Jungle_.

Ethan stood in the center of the room, surrounded by stuffed animals and giant blocks and all sorts of glittering accessories. He looked incredibly small in the middle of the large room, wearing dark clothes that brightened the pink, and his frown made the dolls look that much happier.

And then Benny noticed that Ethan was crying, with fat, hot tears rolling down his red cheeks, and the older's spine stiffened because he knew exactly what was happening.

The Trickster had figured out his worst nightmare.

Ethan opened his mouth, but Benny already knew what he was going to say.

"I'm so cold, Benny." he whimpered. "I'm so alone, Benny. And so sad."

"Why?" he choked out. He didn't understand why he was playing into the fantasy, though, because he'd seen the scene more times than he'd had liked to. It was a recurring nightmare he had, starting up sometime in eighth grade when the two had gone climbing after watching _Bridge to Terabithia_, and Ethan had almost tumbled out of the tree they were in and to his death. Since then, the dream had escalated from Ethan accidentally falling and dying to the smaller brunette purposely hurting himself, and Benny being unable to stop him.

"I don't know why I'm even still here." He seemed not to have heard Benny's broken response, and swept away to a different spot in the room. The black in his clothes followed him like a rain cloud, and suddenly the bright children's toys looked incredibly out of place. "No one even cares about me."

"I care." Benny told him. "I care about you, Ethan."

"No one needs me." he sighed. "I don't belong here."

Benny's whole heart gave out when he saw the silver of the knife, and the light overhead reflecting off of it, and he gulped around for words like a fish out of water. So many times he had tried to stop this part of the dream from happening, to wake up or just pull the knife away and Ethan close, but he'd never been able to.

"Please just listen to me, Ethan." Benny wobbled closer to the other but the invisible wall that always popped up stopped him; it almost made him pause when Ethan was just out of reach of him. Of safety.

"It would all be much simpler," Ethan observed, as though talking about what he'd eaten for dinner that night, and Benny's eyes filled with tears when he finally pulled the knife out of his jacket pocket. "If I just ended it, wouldn't it? No one would have to pretend to care anymore."

"But I do care, Ethan." Benny said thickly. "I love you _so much,_ Ethan."

Ethan looked at him, and smiled without any humor. "That's exactly what you would say to get me to stop, wouldn't you? I don't think you mean it."

Benny hiccuped on a sob. "I do mean it, though. Please, don't do this-"

"I'm so tired." The words left Ethan with a sigh, and he rolled the knife handle over in his fingers.

The blade flickered brightly, like a camera flash, as Ethan adjusted his grip on it, fingers whitening over the handle. And then he met Benny's eyes, and with a pain-filled grin full of hope and tragedy, he drove his hand forwards and Benny watched with a cry as the knife sank into Ethan's abdomen.

"Ethan!" The wall finally melted away and Benny fell to his knees in front of his boyfriend's double, eyes throbbing as they took in the blood pooling up from his chest and appearing in flecks along his lips.

Benny's lungs burned as he cradled Ethan's head in a large hand, while the other tried to stop the bleeding, but Benny knew from many times of trying that nothing he would do was going to save Ethan.

The dying teenager on the ground looked up at Benny through what was left of the light in his eyes, and when he smiled, his teeth were coated in blood.

"I'm happy, Benny. It's okay- I want to die."

"Please, stop." Benny sobbed. "Stop it, Ethan."

For a moment, Benny had forgotten that the person he was holding onto wasn't actually Ethan, but a Trickster who had constructed themselves to look like his dearest friend. So Benny wept as Ethan's body went cold, his phaser forgotten by the door, and all he could think about was the pain building up in his chest.

He was surprised, though, when the body underneath him began to move. It started to shake as his crying continued on and soon it was breaking apart like a crumbling statue. Benny scrambled away with a gasp, and went through all the memories of this nightmare- none of them had ended with Ethan performing a Professor Quirrell on him and collapsing into a pile of ash before his eyes.

When the shaking stopped, it was a pile of rubble that was before Benny, but a girl who was in his Algebra class who liked to use sarcasm a lot and reminded him of a night without the moon and stars in the sky.

"That was quite the performance." Monica grinned crookedly, clapping slowly. And for once in his lifetime, Benny was stunned silent. "Very touching."

The knife that had been in Monica's stomach moments before was now in her hand, and Benny realized all too late what had really just happened, and he cursed himself for forgetting about the Trickster ordeal.

"Let's see the real thing happen reversed, shall we?" she proposed, and Benny tried to scramble back through the blocks and Barbies as Monica advanced him.

There was a banging sound behind him and the smell of vanilla wafted under Benny's nose, and he knew at once who it was.

"I don't think so, bitch." Erica snarled at her, and if Monica had been anyone else she would have cowered away.

"You brought a friend." she looked down at Benny, her perfectly manicured eyebrows quirking upwards. "How nice."

That was when Rory and Sarah appeared behind her, Ethan trailing at Rory's elbow.

"Actually, he brought more than one." Rory replied with a smirk. He held up his key and broke off the end, revealing the large stake hidden in the shaft. "And we came prepared."

Now Monica did look nervous, but she was quick to cover it up with a laugh. "Hit me with your best shot."

Chaos erupted after that; two swirls of blonde and one of brown mixed together as Monica took on the three vampires, and Ethan circled around them, looking adorably determined though he couldn't distinguish the four from each other. Benny was still heaving on the ground, his heart racing a million miles an hour, and all he could do was stare at Ethan and yell at himself to get himself together, because Ethan was alive and right in front of him, dammit.

Rory was the first one out of the loop of battle, flying away from the dreidel-like scene in the middle of the playroom. He hit the wall of the house with a crunching thud and rolled onto his side, wincing with wide eyes. Sarah then followed as Monica got her with a vicious uppercut to the jaw, and she flew to the wall next to Rory's where a poster of Hannah Montana hung. Her glasses fell off and crunched beneath her head, and she lay panting on the ground, body limp and bruised.

"You three are the most pathetic group of vampires I've ever seen." Monica laughed, circling around with Erica opposite of her. "What's up? Not enough food?"

Erica swung at Monica, who dodged the hit easily, and it only deepened the blonde's scowl. "Sarah made me promise to lower the blood intake. Obviously, _that's _not happening again."

"You're like a cat." Monica snickered. "Feisty. Obedient."

"I bite, though." Erica promised, before lashing out again and getting Monica right in the chest. It was harsh enough to force Monica back a few steps, the breath wooshing out her with a gasp, and Benny thought for a millisecond that it was all over, and that they had won.

But then Monica regained her footing and growling at Erica, she struck out with tenfold the force and Erica was hurdled against the same wall as Rory. She was just as put out by the lashing and could only groan on the floor, looking hateful and in agony.

Monica eyed a still observing Ethan hungrily, as though he were some sort of treat, and that was most definitely not going to fly with Benny.

"You five are absolutely _adorable_." Monica told him, and Ethan grimaced at her. "You think you're all so mighty and powerful, but you forget that I'm a demigod."

Ethan's eyes narrowed. "You might be a demigod but you're still mortal, like us. A quick stab to the heart and you're done for."

Monica tilted her head. "Maybe. But I'm much harder to catch. You, on the other hand, remind me of a rabbit, and I'm the fox on your heels. I'm snapping at you right now, Ethan. You're so close to me that my mouth's watering."

This made Ethan look very uncomfortable, his face screwing up into a look of displeasure. "Um."

"You're that cute little cottontail," Monica was suddenly right before him, gripping his chin tightly in her manicured fingers, and when Benny saw the blood welling up underneath where her nails were cutting into his chin, he began to see red. "And you're losing speed fast, kiddo."

As Monica continued to taunt Ethan, he very silently maneuvered his way over to Sarah, who had only enough strength left to hand him her back-up stake inside of her jacket sleeve.

He got to his feet as Monica told Ethan he was tasty enough to make her dizzy, and as silently as he could, he tip toed his way through the mass of plastic and glitter.

Monica's eyes dug into Ethan's and they had a sort of staring contest with each other, neither of them willing to back down and each equally disgusted with the other.

"Humans." Monica snorted, and then shoved Ethan so hard that he hit the wall and cracked his head against the blue paint. "You're so pathetic, and manipulative."

"Actually, we're not humans." Benny said with satisfaction, and his grin grew as Monica turned to him with naked surprise. "I'm a warlock, honey, and Ethan's the male version of Jennifer Love Hewitt."

Monica didn't have time to even blink at Benny before he took the stake in his hands and shoved it through Monica's chest, the bone and flesh cracking beneath him bringing him a sort of grim pride in himself.

"You peaked at my Starfleet crew members, bitch."

Monica let out a final croak before collapsing onto the ground, and her body began to shake and crumble the same way all of her horrific creations had. Her head folded down onto her chest, then her legs bent up to her thighs, and the rest of her body followed until she was in a tight box. Then she exploded, the left over dust melting down into the carpet.

The five stared at the spot at Benny's feet for a moment, breathing heavily and aching all over. The shock of the whole thing finally being all over had rendered them silent, but words weren't needed. It was easy enough to just know that since they'd killed the Trickster, they'd never be speaking of it again.

Benny broke out of his thoughts when Ethan shifted against the wall and groaned, gasping when touching the back of his head.

"You okay, E?" Benny asked him gently, moving to rest his hand on Ethan's pale cheek.

Ethan looked up at him and smiled lightly, nodding. "Yeah. I think I'm gonna be just fine."

Benny laughed and pulled him into a strong embrace, and feeling Ethan thrumming with life against him was all he needed to be okay again. Ethan's arm curled around him and together they just stood there in the middle of Sarah's old playroom, already chasing the nightmares they'd seen away.

The vampires smiled at the two and helped each other up, wincing as their vampiric powers kicked in and began working to heal them.

"What do you say we go party some more?" Sarah suggested, Ethan and Benny looking up at her from their comfortable embrace.

Ethan grinned. "That sounds super."

_**xXxXxXx**_

_**That was a horrible ending .-. I am so sorry but my brain hurts. I promise to make Ethan and Benny super duper mushy and sickeningly sweet in the last chapter. also guess what comes next that's right implied sEXY TIMES YAY GAY SMUT. So I hope that the thought of Ethan and Benny basically making babies together will be enough to cover up for the monstrosity that this chapter was and here's also your favorite candy as an apology. **_

_**Last chapter's on Thursday guys I'm SAD WAH I've never finished a multi-chapter story before that's more than like three chapters so I'm super excited :D Until Thursday!**_


	8. This Is Halloween

_**Side Note : This is it, guys. This is the end, and not the pretty kind with fucking Jonah Hill and James fapful Franco. This is the end of Heads Will Roll and no I am not sobbing quietly into my One Direction pillow right now. **_

_**I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for reading and reviewing this story, because you're all the reason why I write and look forwards to hopping on and cooking something up (yes I just made a witch/Halloween joke just go with it haha Adam Sandler sorry). At the end, I'll be thanking you all individually, so please stay tuned for that :) I hope you like this last chapter that I will probably epically fail at, and that Heads Will Roll will be a story you'll come back to every Halloween. **_

_**But who knows- maybe I'll make a new story for next year ;D**_

_**Also the song I mention when the two get to Ethan's is like my favorite song right now and I love it to death, so if you've never heard it, please listen to it? Please? For me :3?**_

_**xXxXxXx **_

Despite what had happened that night, and his promise to hate every single moment of it, Ethan was sad when Sarah's party ended. The celebration had ended at ten and slowly everyone leaked out of her house, grinning with flushed cheeks and racing hearts, thanking the hostess and asking her to throw another party for Christmas, maybe, or New Years. Sarah grinned at them and promised to come up with another one soon, and everyone left happy.

Benny and Ethan were the last to scuttle over to the front door, reluctant to leave, but at the same time unable to wait to get out of their costumes and settled down for a night of movies.

She smiled warmly at them when they finally stood in front of her, looking exhausted and alive.

"You guys were great tonight." she told them sincerely. "Thank you so much."

Benny laughed. "It's not like it's something we're not used to. We save the town nearly every week."

"But this time it was different." Sarah looked at him with a pointed eyebrow raise, and as Benny swallowed down her scorn she pulled Ethan into a tight hug.

"Thanks." she whispered into his ear, and Ethan grinned because two years ago he would have killed for a moment like this.

"We'll be back at it by the middle of November- I guarantee it."

Sarah agreed that they probably would as she pulled Benny into a hug as well, looking smaller in her Neo cosplay than she had before. She looked like a regular teenage girl who had a group of tightly knit friends who also happened to be a vampire who kicked supernatural ass and Ethan wondered when he felt sorry for Sarah. She had everything someone else would kill for and she wanted the one thing she couldn't have. He didn't pity her but the pure ecstasy he'd felt since icing Monica weakened slightly. He had heard her talking to Erica earlier on, after finishing the task at hand, and remembered her saying that she wish her vampirism was just a costume she could take off and put away in a box until the next year.

Benny's warm hand on his neck pulled him away from the tornado of thoughts raging through his head, and blinking, he looked up at Benny's softly smiling face.

"Ready to go, E?"

Ethan nodded, grabbing his staff from the cornered couch. "Yeah. I'm beat."

They said their final goodbyes before exiting Sarah's large, comfortable house, Erica shouting 'Don't do anything I wouldn't do!' after them as the door swung shut.

Ethan and Benny laughed together, because they were pretty sure they'd done everything Erica hadn't.

_**xXxXxXx**_

When arriving at the Morgan's house, Samantha was gone with Ross and Jane as she said they would be. They were taking Jane out to go trick-or-treating, and then were staying at their Aunt Rebecca's house that night when finished, so Ethan and Benny had the whole house to themselves.

But Ethan had promised to call her as soon as they got home, and after telling Benny that he could go ahead and take a shower, he dialed his mom's number on his cell and watched Benny as he made his way upstairs.

"Hey, Ethan." Samantha chirped into the phone. "How was Sarah's?"

Another flash of Benny's gored face and the obscene amount of dancing they'd done went through Ethan's head again, and he shuddered back the candy creeping back up his throat.

"It was fun. We mainly just danced and hung out with Sarah, Erica and Rory."

"That's good." his mother replied, shifting on the other line. "Have fun watching movies with Benny. And I assume you'll _just _be watching movies, correct?"

Ethan choked on air and felt his neck burning bright red at his mother's implying thought, the knowledge that Benny was currently getting into the shower doing nothing to help him.

"Yes, mom."

"Good. I'll see you tomorrow around two."

"Alright, love you mom."

"Love you too, Ethan."

Ethan let out the groan he had been holding in after he'd ended the call, scrubbing a hand through his tangled hair. They weren't _that _obvious, were they?

Well, no matter the reasoning behind Samantha's suspicion, Ethan told himself that he was a teenager who lived to break promises and left it at that as he made his way upstairs.

There was already steam billowing out from the crack in the bathroom door when Ethan got to the top of the stairs, and smiling to himself, he went into his room to take his costume off and set his phone down. Though he loved his costume to death, there was nothing more liberating than taking off the lot of tight fabric and flowing capes, and his neck was almost sore from the amount of pressure his helmet had put on it.

Maybe he could weedle Benny into giving him a neck massage.

Benny was singing when Ethan crept stealthily into the bathroom, mist hanging in the air like a raincloud and his boyfriend's velvety voice warming the room even more so. It sounded like a love song, one Ethan had never heard before, but it was lovely so he refrained from pointing out that Valentine's Day was still four months away.

Ethan bit his lip to refrain from laughing when finally getting into the shower behind Benny, which of whom had piled nearly a whole bottle of shampoo on top of his head in order to style his wild hair into a mohawk. He looked like Mordecai from _Regular Show_, waving his hands around with the bottle in his hands and his hips shaking.

"Excuse me, Elvis." was the only form of greeting he gave before wiggling in between the jet of water and Benny, tipping his head back into the warm spray.

Benny scoffed, wiping a bubble away from his forehead as it sank towards his eyes. "Excuse yourself, because that was not Elvis. I was singing _Royals _by Lorde, E."

Ethan snorted. "You're such a hipster, I swear."

"I've never worn booty shorts or waist-length shorts in my life, so I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"You don't have to dress like Lana Del Ray to be a hipster, Benny."

Ethan grabbed the bottle of shampoo out of Benny's hand and squirted some into his palm before giving it back, grinning widely at his friend's cutely unremorseful pout.

"It's a good song," he muttered in a last attempt to prove himself, but Ethan honestly could care less.

"Sing it for me, then." he insisted. "I've never heard it before."

"I can't."

"Why?"

Benny bit his lip. "You give me stage fright."

"Bullshit." Ethan murmured, but instead of insisting his friend go on, he hooked his slippery hands around Benny's slippery sides and pulled him in for a slippery kiss.

The taller of the two made an undignified noise in his mouth and pressed him back against the wall of the shower, and in under ten seconds Ethan's head was swimming due to the mixture of boiling hot and freezing cold. It felt as though half of him was on fire, and the other had been dunked into the ocean during December, the combination of the two was slowly turning his brain to mush.

Benny's large, roaming hands were the main source of the scorching heat slowly picking up all over Ethan's lithe body, and little by little the chills from the night began to melt away and his fright slipped away as if it had never been there in the first place.

"I told my mom," Ethan sighed, kissing Benny again. "That we were watching movies."

"We are. Just not at this moment."

"I'm lying to her." he hinted, but when Benny just kissed him harder and quoted Footloose by calling Ethan his rebel child, Ethan could have cared less what Samantha assumed they were doing.

He tangled his nimble fingers into Benny's sudsy hair and held onto him for all that it was worth. And when he found out that Benny was still wearing his prosthetic Vulcan ears, there in the shower, he made a very high pitched sound that made Benny both want to laugh until he cried and groan until his sexual frustration was no longer existent.

So he did a little of both, Ethan right behind him.

_**xXxXxXx**_

They were on their second Halloween-themed film, _Halloweentown_, having picked a nice one after watching Michael Myers' classic horror film with the same name of holiday, when Ethan finally brought it up.

"I didn't get to the basement in time to see what Monica turned into to mess with you." he whispered into Benny's neck, where he was currently cuddled up to. Benny tensed up immediately, and Ethan rubbed his thumb over Benny's side. "It wasn't real, whatever she put you through."

Benny nodded silently, and his grip on Ethan tightened subconsciously. The shorter boy was the only one of the pair who noticed.

"I just really don't want to talk about it." Benny said back just as quietly, and Ethan nodded.

Benny thought that that was going to be the end of the discussion, but then Ethan took in a breath and said, "She took me back to freshman year, that day you got bitten by a zombie." and Benny felt guilty for clamming up.

Ethan shuffled closer, something Benny thought was impossible because they were basically folded into each other like a damn origami swan, and let out the gust of air he had just taken in. "I felt the same fear I'd felt back then, unable to save you. It was awful."

"I'm fine, though." Benny assured him, spider-like hands strumming up and down Ethan's back like strings on a harp. "I was fine then and I'll be fine for the rest of my life. I've gotten lucky this far- I can't see much else threatening my existence."

Ethan smiled tightly. "Maybe. Let's not jinx it, 'kay?"

That was the end of the conversation on Ethan's half, and Benny, unready to bring up his half of the horror, simply pressed a warm kiss to Ethan's hair and relaxed back against the pillows again as Marny took off in a cab on the screen.

_**xXxXxXx **_

Ethan was woken out of a dead sleep at around three in the morning, and for a moment he was incredibly confused, blinking into the blackness in a daze.

But then Benny sighed quietly next to him and shifted slightly, almost restlessly, and Ethan had just cracked open his lips to ask what was wrong with his boyfriend, when Benny beat him to the punch.

"I saw you, in the basement." Benny told him quietly, and Ethan was suddenly aware of the fact that Benny thought he was still asleep, so he closed his mouth and steadied his breath out again. "When Monica finally tracked me down."

He felt Benny's fingers tickle over his hand and wait there for a moment, before settling down and laying over his. He fought the urge to open his hand up and hold onto Benny's for dear life.

"It was a nightmare I've been having since you almost fell out of that tree in eighth grade. I always walk into your room only to find you huddled into yourself by the window, looking down onto the lawn. You're always wearing a black jacket and you always tell me how lonely you are, how sick of life you've gotten. I try to talk some sense into you but you always pretend I'm not even there, and then..."

Benny took a moment to collect him, sniffling slightly next to him, and Ethan's chest felt as though someone were sitting on it.

"Then you pull out a knife, a silver one, and you say it'd just be easier if you were dead. I always walk forwards to stop you but a wall stops me from getting near you, and then I have to watch you smile like it's all not a damn thing to me before shoving the knife right into your heart. I only get to move when you're almost dead, and all you say to me is that you're happier dying than you ever were living. And then the light leaves your eyes and I wake up, and there are always so many tears in my eyes that I can't even tell if I'm looking at the ceiling or the ground."

Ethan felt Benny curl closer, burying his nose into Ethan's freshly washed hair.

"I just don't want to lose you, E. You and Grandma are all I've got."

Ignoring his gasp of shock, Ethan shifted until he was pressed up against Benny with no space in between them, legs tangled and his face hidden in Benny's rising and falling chest.

"I'm right here," Ethan mumbled into his Captain America shirt. "And I promise you that I'm not going anywhere."

Benny didn't have the energy to be angry at him for listening into his monologue and instead just curled farther around the other most important person to him, their words soothing away his pain and their scent pushing away the budding tears.

When they finally fell asleep again, Ethan and Benny looked like a pair of earbuds from all of their tangled limbs but they were happy and safe and that was all that mattered.

They didn't have any nightmares that night.

_**xXxXxXx **_

_**That ending was pretty A++ compared to others I've written so yays :D I'm sad it's over but the journey was fun and now I can get back to writing All That Glitters cause sHIT. **_

_**And now, it's time to thank you beautiful people of fanfiction and the MBAV fandom and the lovers of the gay. I'll go in order of those who commented first and work my way out:**_

_**Bethan Forever: Hot damn girl you reviewed every single one of my chapters and wrote like a whole paragraph flipping shit. Let's be besties, 'kay? You're awesome. You're also really funny and just holy crap your reviews made my life because they were amusing and exciting :D I love you! All my Bethan stories are here on out dedicated to you because you're a golden flower child. **_

_**TeamEthanMorgan: Same goes for you, who also reviewed every single chapter! You liked the openness of the boys and gOD YES THANKS FOREVER. I really wanted to write a story where they almost gave everyone cavities and I'm glad you all for that :D You're funny as hell and fasijdk let's be besties too, okay? Super! **_

_**funkybananas47: Honey, first off your penname is hella fabulous, please don't ever change it because that's literally the best thing I've ever heard. You reviewed a ton and I cried all the time because you said I was funny and usually I'm the only one who thinks I'm remotely witty so thanks forever :"D Let's frolic around a field together**_

_**MisreadSoul: Just the fact that you know what ATWT is and have attempted watching it makes you a flawless moose so anyone who says otherwise can gtfo. I, sadly, have only watched like 200 hundred bits of the Luke&Noah story but I abandoned it after awhile and when I tried to watch it again, just... It was too much. But thanks for reading and reviewing and being bootiful.**_

_**TrampledRose: Bbe thanks so much :"3 Your penname is also a piece of art and please don't change it because I love roses and gdabshjknl. I'm glad you liked the story and hope this last chapter didn't disappoint!**_

_**Dominus Trinus 13: I'm sorry that I probably like ripped your soul out of your nose with my sucky updating and chapters, so I'm sorry deary XD But your reviews were like giving me KitKats tenfold so thanks so much for everything!**_

_**And to the guests and others who reviewed a couple of times: You are all fabulous too and I would be nowhere without you! **_

_**Have a great Halloween guys and I'll see you when I finally update All That Glitters! **_

_**TheKoganKid xxx**_


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